Intrusion of the Dark Stars
by Obssesed Nuker
Summary: From beyond a veil unknown they came. To obtain, to kill, to purify, to consume, to harvest. And thus Gensokyo knew war.
1. Chapter 1: Storm Warning

**A/N: **Okay, a lot to cover here, but it's important so pay attention. Most of it deals with Touhou more then it deals with Warhammer, but still.

First: I'm relatively new to Touhou. I'm still not knowledgeable, particularly when it comes too spellcard specifics (luckily, I have the Touhou wiki for that). Thankfully, the fact that the game background is 80% fanon gives me a lot of flexibility. Still, I know that there's canon. Unfortunately due to a lack of time, patience, and reflexes I am unable to access the vast majority of it. If there is a minor screw-up in relation to the plot, point it out and I'll consider fixing it. If it's a major screw-up in relation to the plot, then Tzeentch did it. Or it takes place in a alternate Touhou setting where everybody isn't as absurdly overpowered vs other settings as in Canon, I don't know, but please try and go along with it. Alternatively, you could not read this story... the back button is right there, in the upper-left corner (I presume, I don't know what browser your using).

Second: to keep the character count down and my sanity points high, I reserve the right to cut people. I don't know exactly who and what that will be, although everybody from the PC-98 era ('cept for the obvious trio) is definitely gone.

Third: Glass Cannon interpretation of Touhou characters (with obvious exceptions) ahoy.

Note: Brackets indicate the characters are speaking a language that is not Japanese.

I have a glossary of terms for the uninformed at the bottom.

**Disclaimer: **Warhammer belongs to Game Workshop. Touhou Project belongs to ZUN. Have a nice story.

**Intrusion of the Dark Stars**

**Chapter 1: Storm Warning**

The land of Gensokyo.

A spiritual land, a hidden land, separated from the larger world for its own good.

A place of magic, of the impossible, where the mythical exist alongside the mundane.

And a place of danger for those unprepared to face it.

Amidst the Youkai, Shinto gods, and vampires, to name a few, who inhabit the land, one finds the clusters of ordinary humanity. Bastions of certain security in an otherwise unsecure world, settlements built to support agriculture, provide shelter for travelers, or act as trading outposts dot the land. The largest of these is the unimaginatively titled 'Human Village', named so because it is unquestionably the largest human settlement in Gensokyo. Its central location and proximity to a number of landmarks, first and foremost the Hakurei Shrine, made it the number one trading spot in all the land.

It was another bustling, and hot, summer day. Asata Matsumoto, gloriously dressed in torn rags and covered in a coating of bloody gashes, came screaming down the path into the village. Understandably, he drew shocked and surprised (but mostly shocked) looks from everybody he passed by, all the while moving at a rather incredible speed for an otherwise ordinary human and never seemed to stop to draw breath. The few people who tried to stop him simply found themselves outrun.

Asata made a beeline for the home, and school, of Keine Kamishirasawa, the de-facto village mayor. One might ask how she wound-up in such a position and, to be frank, Keine would like to know herself. Though she would deny it, the position had come about naturally as a result of her previous title as the 'Village Guardian'. But in the end, she heard Asata approaching only a few seconds before he began smashing his fist against the door like a man possessed. The irony of that metaphor would only be discovered later.

Angry that her classes were being interrupted, Kiene was still shocked speechless when she opened the door to find a bloody and torn human being standing at the entrance. The moment the door had finished sliding all the way across Asata stopped shrieking incoherently and screamed: "THEY ARE ALL DEAD!"

And only then did he collapse.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

For a land as backwards (technologically speaking) on average as Gensokyo, word could still spread with an absolutely astonishing speed. Magic helped, as did Youkai and particularly powerful humans who could literally fly. Within an hour the news that a man from an outlying village had collapsed at the feet of the Human Village Guardian/Schoolteacher after running and screaming bloody murder through the town had reached the ears of Aya Shameimaru. Aya, a reporter Tengu over a thousand years old, knew a news story when she heard one.

The first location she went to, naturally, was the Human Village itself. Keine had been expecting it; the Guardian knew Aya far too well, and was thus waiting to inform Aya that the man was still passed out, and they didn't know when he would wake-up, and oh hey here is the location of the village he lived in, please drop by and tell us what happened on the way back. Having living relatives of the Matsutsumoto family in the Human Village had proven useful for that last tidbit.

And so Aya eagerly went on her way, only to become slightly (but only slightly) less eager when she arrived at the farming village.

The first, and most obvious, sign that something was dreadfully wrong was the still smoldering buildings. Except for a single house and a tool shed in the dead center of the locale, all the structures had been burned to the ground. Most disturbing were the rice fields… the water in them was no longer water at all. Aya gagged as she landed, never shirking in writing down every detail while doing so. The blood was human blood… but it smelled _**wrong**_.

A slight rustling sound from a cluster of bushes, only a few meters behind her, made the Tengu pause. Her acute sense of hearing honed in on the sound and compared the immense quantity of noises she had heard over the years. A slight smile crept over the reporter's face… of course she would be here.

"Alright Reimu… I can hear you." Aya called over her shoulder.

Sighing, the Hakurei Shrine Priestess stepped out of the copse. "Hmph, I figured you would show up. Hoped I would be able to get the drop on you this time around."

Aya shrugged, "Turnabout is fair play, I suppose, but you should know better." The Tengu glanced across the desolate sight of a village destroyed. "So, do you have any idea about what happened?"

"Got here only a minute before you did, I'm afraid." Reimu walked past Aya and kneeled down to inspect the blood. "I noticed you gag earlier…"

"The blood smells wrong."

"You mean it isn't human blood?"

"No, its human blood it just…" Aya pinched her nose, "Smells nasty… no." The reporter stopped pinching her nose and placed her finger against her chin in thought. "Not nasty… I can't think of a word for it."

"Sounds strange." Reimu said casually, cautiously dipping her finger into the blood, inspecting it, and then wiping the digit clean on a leaf.

Aya tried a different tact, "Is your intuition telling you anything?"

Reimu closed her eyes and sighed, "No."

"Really?" Aya blinked in surprise, Reimu had a sort of sixth sense when it came to this sort of thing and for it to fail now… "But this is Incident material if I ever saw some, with a capital [I] in the new language."

"You would know about that wouldn't you?" Reimu couldn't resist the dig at Aya's propensity to start incidents solely to report on them. "But yeah, it's really bugging me. And there's something off about this area too…"

"You mean-"

"Besides the obvious yes. But I can't place my finger on it."

Aya realized that Reimu was right, there was something weird that neither girl could pin down. Wordlessely, the two began to walk towards the still standing house.

"Think the local Youkai did this?" Aya asked.

"Maybe not local…" Reimu replied, "The only ones around are Fairies after all and I heard this village at least had some half-way decent magicians."

"It did dear…"

That voice had not belonged to Aya, who was surprised that she had been snuck-up on, but Reimu still knew it all too well.

"Great." Reimu asked, turning around to face the oh-so-familiar red eyed, blonde-haired woman who had seemingly appeared out of thin air, although both Aya and Reimu knew better: they simply hadn't seen the boundary the Youkai had used. She was smiling at Reimu with that vague sense of amusement that always bugged the Shrine Priestess

Reimu continued, "Why are _you _here? I doubt you had anything to do with this."

"Oh, you're quite correct but I was curious and…" The sense of amusement vanished, "I think this has something to do with… well, I'm not quite sure what happened, but it has to do with the border."Instantly the Priestess and the Tengu were paying attention. Yukari Yakumo was _the _most powerful being in Gensokyo and had an intimate relation with the Border that divided the fantasy land from the outside world. After all, she had created it.

"Wait… wait…" Aya pondered, "What do you mean you're not sure. If it has to do with the Border wouldn't you know for certain?"

"You would think that, but apparently whatever happened was extremely temporary and the disturbance vanished the instant after I noticed it." Yukari sighed and leaned back on the sun umbrella she always carried around. "It felt like something big had passed through, or a lot of something's all at once, but it also felt more like more than that."

"More than that how?" Aya's eyes lit up, "Wait… lots of somethings? Maybe we're being invaded!"

"I don't know and unlikely." Yukari's tone was flat, "Though this village does make me wonder."

Reimu gave a bored grunt and turned to continue on towards the house, the two non-humans following. Aya put away her notepad in favor of snapping some pictures, the first shot was of the destroyed houses and then another of the blood-filled fields.

"So, a single house and a tool shed left standing." Reimu said sarcastically, deciding to inspect the latter and moving up to the New Style swinging door. "Makes just as much sense as anything else to me." More seriously now, "Maybe we can find a local fairy smart enough to describe what happened."

"Where _are _the local fairies anyways?" Yukari asked.

"Your smarter than that their…" Aya trailed off and exchanged a look with Reimu. She had been about to say that the fairies wouldn't come here because of the human population. But, obviously, there was no more human population and Fairies are a curious lot (too curious for their own good the semi-informed would say), which would trump any revulsion at the stench from the strange smelling blood. By all rights there should be at least a handful wandering around by now.

Reimu wordlessly opened the tool shed door… and what must have been several hundred fairies fell out.

Or more accurately, the skinned and decaying body parts of several hundred fairies. Reimu leapt back as the overwhelming smell of decaying flesh hit her. "That isn't _**right**_!"

She meant that in more ways than one. When a fairy suffers a fatal blow, like say being chopped up, it was just supposed to vanish in a spray of silver lights and later reincarnate a short distance away from where it was killed. It certainly was _not_supposed to stick around as a cadaver.

"Well we know what happened to the local fairy population." Yukari added as Aya reflexively snapped a photo.

"And you don't?" Reimu snapped, with a little concern.

Yukari's upbeat tone didn't falter, "Not the slightest." Then more seriously: "But yes, that is disturbing and it does concern me."

"So long as we're clear on that." Reimu sighing, covered her nose as the smell of the fairy corpses wafted over to her current position. "Let's just… check the house and then go see if that Asata guy is awake yet. He's our only witness so we should definitely talk to him."

Aya sighed, "And here I was hoping for an exclusive." Despite the neutral tone, her face did look slightly disturbed. Only after Yukari and she had turned did Reimu permit herself to shiver.

The entrance to the house past the sliding door seemed straightforward enough: it was abundantly clear that whoever or whatever had come through here had ransacked the interior. Furniture was overturned or broken, pictures and tapestry shattered or torn. The oddest part was the wildly different paint that had been splashed seemingly at random on the walls and ceiling. Aya snapped a picture and continued on, but Reimu and Yukari took a second, and harder, look.

It was Yukari, with her sharper senses that noticed it first: the otherwise ordinary paint was still subtlety shifting despite being blatantly dry. The colors slowly and near-imperceptibly brightened and faded, small shapes flowed in and out of focus within the paint, shapes that made the pair's vision blurry. And to boot, the two-dimensional coverings seemed to take on a depth at will. But that was impossible, right?

Both Yukari and Reimu stepped back and rubbed their eyes as the sight gave rapidly gave them a headache. For Yukari this was even more disconcerting then Reimu, she wasn't supposed to suffer from headaches. Whatever unease she felt, though, she kept otherwise hidden.

"You notice it?" Reimu asked, now staring at the floor.

Yukari simply nodded and turned towards the doorway Aya had disappeared through. Not a moment later, the Tengu reappeared, looking noticeably paler and clutching her camera so hard Reimu thought it might break. "Aya, what's wrong?"

Without answering, indeed without another sound or glance, the reporter rapidly walked past them, onto the deck, and took off into the sky. Reimu and Yukari watched her go in confusion, and then turned back to the room the crow had walked out of.

"You first."

Yukari hid her unease with a playful smile and skillfully rebuked Reimu's request as if she was playing a game. "Please, the younger should get the first chance to experience something new."

"So you know what scared Aya?" Reimu asked.

"No, but I hardly see the need to expose myself to danger." To be honest, Yukari didn't really want Reimu to go alone either, she had grown… fond of the shrine maiden in their association. And teasing her was so much more fun than teasing Ran!

"Likewise, and we all know who could handle whatever is in there better."

"I thought you defeated me that time."

"That was a fluke."

"I appreciate the admission."

Reimu's eyebrow twitched. "Look, let's just go in there together at the same time."

Yukari grinned, that was the suggestion she had been waiting for. "Alright."

They did. And what they found on the other side made them stop in their tracks. Plastered on the wall was a wobbling mass of human flesh, fused together yet every individual in the mess could still be perfectly identified. Their faces were the clearest and each one was blatantly plastered with an expression of sheer, unbridled _**terror**_. The bulging eyes and opened mouths fixed in a frozen stare of clear frightened madness. The human cluster blot was within a circle of bones, some with bits of flesh still stuck, with eight bones added as 'points' splitting away.

"What-" Yukari managed before Reimu doubled over and vomited. The shrine maiden emptied her stomach contents on the floor then looked at the atrocity and proceeded to throw-up again.

Yukari merely stared wide-eyed, her demeanor lost. She had seen plenty of horrendous scenes before. Being well over… well, she didn't know how old she was anymore, but being obscenely old, one saw a lot of bad things. She had never, though, encountered such a scene.

Subconsciously, she noticed the flesh had not started decaying and the room smelled oddly clean. There was something distinctly different in the air, but it was not something she could pin down. Instead, she shook herself out of her funk and turned to Reimu.

"C-come on." The Youkai said, taking the shrine maiden and guiding her out, making sure not to let her look at the mass again. "This definitely isn't pleasant."

"Oh gods…" Reimu muttered, still sounding a little weak, "I need some water. No, scratch that, I need some sake. Never thought I'd hope Suika is around when I get back to the Shrine."

"Well, have some water for now." Yukari opened up a portal, pulled out a cup with one hand and a jug with the other, and began pouring out the water.

"What… _what _was that?" Reimu sat down on the porch and shuddered, "I mean… does that mean something? Was there a point to it?"

"I don't know." Yukari replied, handing the cup over.

"You've been saying that an awful lot today. I don't think I like it."

"I don't either, now drink."

"Alright." The Priestess took a sip. There was silence for a long while after that, the Youkai and the Shrine Maiden sat there. Finally, with a sigh, Reimu got back to her feet.

"I should go back to the village, tell them what happened if Aya didn't and see if the boys awake."

"Okay," Yukari glanced at the dead fairies, "I'll investigate a little more and have Ran clean up. This place is an eyesore like this."

"You're so lazy."

"And loving every second of it."

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

"That's all kinds of messed up."

"I know." Reimu said. She had gone back to the village only to find that Asata Matsumoto had not woken up yet. After recounting the details too Keine, who seemed very disturbed at the news, she had gone back to the Shrine that she also called home to find someone there. Unfortunately, it wasn't Suika, but it was someone she could get smashed with just as readily.

She had just finished recounting (again) the day's events to her old friend Marisa Kirisame on the porch of the Hakurei Shrine. The (human) magician had probably been about to pilfer the Shrine's alcohol stocks anyway and Reimu was desperately in the need for some drink. By now it was late evening, the perfect time to get utterly wasted no matter where you were.

Hammering back another shot, Reimu continued, "And the worst part was I could pick out the individual persons. There were like thirty of them, men, woman, and even a few kids, all with that same expression… I mean, gods, what _happened_ to them?"

Marisa narrowed her eyebrows in thought, "Wasn't the village supposed to have a couple of hundred villagers?"

"Yeah, there was no sign of the rest of them." Reimu poured herself another shot, "And not the slightest clue as to who did it. Fairies aren't supposed to die like that, water is not supposed to turn to blood like that, paint isn't supposed to act like that, humans aren't..." She shuddered instead of finishing the sentence.

"There has never been anything like this with previous incidents." Marisa nodded out towards the setting sun, "Even Yuuka wasn't mad enough to go and slaughter a whole village. I mean, this sounds more like something the Hell Crow would have done back during the Geyser Incident."

"Well, I know Okuu hasn't relapsed like that and nothing about area indicated her signature."

"Eh." Marisa grabbed the bottle Reimu was reaching for again and took a direct swig from it, much to the latter's inebriated annoyance. "I wish you had gotten a sample of the paint. Would've liked to take a look at what made it do that."

"I wouldn't want that close a look, it gave me a bad enough headache as was. Now quit hogging the bottle."

The witch shrugged and handed the Sake over without a fuss. "What about that Assassa guy?"

"Asata. Still unconscious. They had Eirin stop by, she says the guy looks fine."

"Eirin does house calls?"

"Under special circumstances."

"[Cool beans.]" At that odd proclamation, Marisa leapt to her feet with a jingle and grabbed her broom, "Well, this is fun and all but I gotta go, I don't want to get so drunk I can't fly."

"Ah… okay." Reimu downed one last shot, then stood up. "Have a good…" She blinked a few times as she recalled something. "MARISA."

"Eh?" The magician gave the most innocent look she could give, which anybody who knew her knew meant nothing.

"Give me the coins."

"What coins?"

"The ones in your pocket." Reimu was now glaring.

"I don't have any coins in my pocket."

"I heard the jingle when you stood up."

"That was a watch."

"Sure it is, look do I have to bash your head in?" The Shrine Maiden took a threatening step forward, a fist raised, "You already agreed not to touch my donation box, and you know how rare it is I get donations."

"Alright, alright fine." Marisa dug out the coins and tossed them over. "It's only six-hundred yen, plus the strange one."

Reimu deftly caught the precious items, "I need every bit for food and festival."

"Yeah, whatever. See-ya."

"See you."

As Marisa took off for home, Reimu sighed and took the coins in, taking out the box which she kept donations in. At that moment, something Marisa had said struck her.

"Plus the strange one?" She said to nobody. Rapidly, Reimu located the coin in question. On the one side of the coin, which was made out of a rare metal she couldn't identify, was engraved a strange double headed eagle. She turned it over to find the other side had been defaced and then recarved with… She dropped the coin as she saw the strange circle, the same one that had been fashioned out of bones around the mass of melted human bodies earlier in the day.

In spite of the alcohol, the Shrine Maiden had a hard time falling asleep that night.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

"Hey, Reimu…"

"Nyarghrl."

"Geeze, you went drinking last night and didn't get me? I'm disappointed."

"Argh, my head." Reimu cracked her eyes open, saw the familiar shape standing over her, then squeezed them closed as the light sent another spike of pain into her hangover. "Suika, could you please get me some water?"

"Sure, sure." The Oni darted out of the room to fulfill the request, returning in moments to find that Reimu had sat up and was gripping her head as sunlight streamed through the window. The Priestess eagerly accepted the water.  
"That's better," Reimu sighed out after she downed the cup. "Not perfect, but better. Just need some eggs and a little time."

"Yeah, well. I got a copy of the Bunbunmaru Newspaper," Suika flipped the paper down onto Reimu's lap. "Front page is the Village Incident."

"Hmm." Reimu picked up the paper and gave the article a brief scan, and then frowned. "Not her usual style, Aya must have really been shaken up."

"Eh?"

"Never mind." Reimu was not interested in divulging the events of the previous day a third time as she gave the paper a more thorough go over. Oddly, Aya had left out the blob of humans, although she apparently learned about the paint in the interim. She appeared not to have taken a picture of the torment either. The reporter must have been even more shaken then Reimu thought.

Raising her gaze to Suika who had taken to rummaging through the bed room closet, Reimu asked: "Are you going to be here the entire day?"

The Oni paused and gave a good natured laugh. "Well not the _entire _day."

Reimu's eyebrow twitched, she stood up, walked over, and grabbed Suika by one of her horns. "If you're going to stick around without me, you're going to stick around OUTSIDE."

"Agh! Hey!" Suika cried, "What do you mean 'without me'?"

"I mean I have to see if the witness has woken up yet." Reimu said as she dragged Suika onto the porch, "So that means I have to go into town. And like hell I'm gonna let you wander inside when I'm not here."

"Ah fine." Suika said as she was released, "Your place after all."

"Rarely feels like it."

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

Reimu had actually woken up rather late in the day, as the Human Village had already been at it for several hours. There was the usual bustle, but there was also a difference about it. The news of the slaughtered village had created a kind-of tension in the air, that the Bunbunmaru story was an oddly flat, clipped, and straightforward account of the scene of the crime only added to the villager's collective unease.

They were reassured that the usual Incident Fixers and the Village Guardian would be able to take care of any problems, or at least that's what everyone silently told themselves, and that everything would be good after the culprit had been defeated. The aforementioned Village Guardian, however, had gone to check up on her guest to find that he had finally awoken.

Asata Matsumoto had looked like an oddly unassuming fellow while asleep, in contrast with the wild-eyed panic as he had raced through the town the day before. Now he had the air of someone who seemed eternally uncomfortable, constantly shifting into a new position on his bed with his eyes darting here and there. He glanced up as Keine came in.

"You're… you're the Village Guardian."

"Yes." Keine said, putting on the mature air she usually did when in public (and not at the school). "We… investigated what happened at the village."

"Y-yeah." Asata said, "Did… did you find anything?"

"Nothing that could tell us anything." Keine admitted, "I was hoping you could shed some light on the story… if that is okay."

"I-it was horrible." The man squeezed his eyes shut, a small trickle of sweat appearing on his forehead as he took a breath.

"Are you sure your okay to talk about it?"

"Y-yes. One moment, please." Asata took another breath then continued. "They came out of nowhere, simple as that. One moment we were tending to our daily chores, the next they were storming out of the tree's from all directions, shouting and shooting these… these light weapons."

"Who were 'they'?"

"I don't know, they… seemed human enough. But they wore this strange armor a-and these masks… and their skin was so scared." Asata visibly shuddered, "A few villagers tried to fight, including our magicians. They took one or two of the attackers out… but then were… blasted to shreds. I saw their bodies get dumped in the rice paddies. They came from all directions, there was no escape!"

Sounded straightforward enough, except… "How did you get away?"

Asata blinked, then looked up at Keine as if the question came out of nowhere, "I-I… can't remember… wait. No." His eyes widened as a memory came back to him, "I was captured too… they marched most of the population out of the village and took me and a few dozen others into the house. They herded us into one side of a room and then… then this great armo-"

Asata froze mid-word, his mouth closed then opened, then closed again. It took Keine a moment too notice that the man was shaking… shaking _badly_. A trickle of blood began to run down his nose… then things got weird.

Asata recoiled away from Keine, slamming his back against the wall. Keine reached forward in alarm, but then jumped back herself as the temperature around the man began to drop, frost rapidly crystallizing on the wall to either side of the man. Asata himself had begun to speak again, the words strung near incomprehensibly together.

"WHAT WERE THEY CHANTING? WHAT DID IT MEAN? WHY DID IT ALL FREEZE? WHY DID THEY MELT? LAUGHTER! LAUGHTER! SLAUGHTER AND LAUGHTER AND DARKNESS OF A FUTURE AND IT THIRSTS AND THIRSTS AND WHY DOES IT ALL THIRST! AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHH!"

The air around Asata visibly _twisted_ like as if it had suddenly decided to act like running water and begin sloshing around. The man's pupils shrank until they were just a black pinprick amidst a sea of white, blood spewed from his mouth and nose and finger nails. Keine instinctively reached for her spellbook, sensing the sudden danger. Asata's body seemed to warp into an impossible shape for the briefest of a moment before switching back with a loud CRACK!

For a moment all was still, Keine view was momentarily transfixed by the horror before her. And finally Asata spoke in a voice not quite his own and in a language Keine had never heard but somehow found herself understanding.

_**"THE DARKNESS… HAS AWAKENED!"**_

And then the world seemed to explode.

_Fin (for now)_

**Glossary of This FIcs Canon (AKA: 'GOT-FIC'): **In order of appearance.

**Youkai:** Generic term for the majority of mystical-based non-human creatures that inhabit Gensokyo, which includes the spirits (ghosts) of dead humans. Youkai have intelligence ranging from cat-like too fully human(ish). All are generally carnivores and capable of being man-eaters, although only the non-sentient usually prey upon humans now-a-days. The vast majority of Youkai live either solitary existences or in small groups, only going into human settlements for rather specific reasons and rather large congregations are usually temporary.

**Fairy: **A species of Youkai which is also generally the weakest and the most simple-minded (dumbest is not an entirely accurate descriptor). They tend to be curious, with the smartest of them often being mischievous enough to pull pranks. They tend to avoid overly-attentive humans, because they are too difficult to prank.

**Tengu**:A species of Youkai noted for a penchant of gossip and politics. Unusually for Youkai, they are quite organized and form rather larger societies like humans, with nearly all within Gensokyo of them are found around the Youkai Mountains to the east of the Human Village. In Japanese mythology, they are analogous to the Western idea of Goblins.

**New Language: **(Fanon, Adapted) Basically English, which is a secondary language that has rapidly gained popularity in Gensokyo despite being sealed from the outside world. Yukari is probably too blame. The Old Language (Japanese) is still the primary tongue spoken and is unlikely to be replaced.

**Magician:** This term has duel meaning. One refers to a human who has taken up the specific job of utilizing magic. The alternative meaning is a species of Youkai who have either been born as Magicians or were human and became magicians through one of a handful of processes.

**Oni: **A species of Youkai that have a great love of drinking, competition, and general partying. They also possess tremendous physical strength and are quite a boisterous bunch, albeit rather good natured. In Japanese mythology they are analogous to the Western idea of Ogres.

**Final Notes: **Not a lot of blatant 40K, eh? It will actually be quite a while until they really start to creep in. Three, maybe four chapters, but there is going to be a major shift before they show.

EDIT: Chapter 2 is progressing, but slowly. In the meantime, I have gone back over this and filled in some missing pieces and stuff that the site up-loader apparently hates. Had to change around some stuff too because the FFN documentation is apparently a stubborn ass.


	2. Chapter 2: Daemonic Arts

**A/N: **God damn this took _forever_ to write! And in light of recent obligations, I can't promise that the other chapters will come out any faster. Anywho…

In light of the (brief) conversation I've had with JoseSkinner, I think I should make something clear…

My goal here is to write a story. And like the vast majority of stories it needs conflict, the protagonists need to be challenged and the challenge must be a credible threat. However, the challenge must not be so great that the protagonists don't have a chance (a problem that the over-arching background of 40K has run into, I am aware). Therefore, if you're expecting a curb stomp in favor of either 'verse, stop reading now and leave.

I am also making a concerted effort here to avoid the violence and character death/suffering from becoming gratuitous but I can't guarantee anything, this does involve Warhammer 40K after all.

Now, to my eternal frustration the sources of information I have looked have all seemed to be frustratingly vague, I have decided to completely wing it in regards to Touhou. This might mean that some characters wind up underpowered compared to, but please bear with it.

Oh yeah, and the characters from UFO won't be appearing both to my lack of familiarity with them and the lots-of-characters=insanity count issue mentioned in the previous chapter. Sorry Youkai Jesus fans.

**Note:**

"Talking in Japanese."

"_Not talking in Japanese."_

**Disclaimer: **Warhammer 40,000 is owned by Games Workshop, any other conclusion is heresy. Touhou Project is owned by ZUN, any other conclusion is a result of too little alcohol.

**Intrusion of the Dark Stars**

**Chapter 2: Daemonic Arts**

"_My Lord-_"

"_I felt it."_  
"_Of course, my Lord_."

…

"_He has always been an impatient one._"

"_He has, my lord."_

"_It changes nothing, he is merely a messenger. The preparations are nearly complete?"_

"_Yes, only a little longer my Lord…"_

"_Very good."_

"Master?"

Eirin Yagokoro didn't respond to her apprentices call, she was too busy staring into space, trying to deny what she had felt happen. It was impossible; she had severed that part of her, done everything to get rid of it, even made that damnable deal with _him _to avoid it. That part of her was gone, fallen into disuse, there was no way she should have felt it, there was no way one of those things could even make it here, unless…

"Master?"

But if one of those things were then, that probably meant that one of their servants was here, and then that meant… Eirin mentally moaned, her mind running through the possibilities. This was bad; this was very, very bad. But what did they want? Gensokyo offered nothing to them, their nature was anathema to nearly everything in Gensokyo and they knew that so… of course. There is only one thing they could possibly want.

"Master?" Eirin blinked as she realized that a hand was lying upon her forehead, she glanced to the side to see her assistant Reisen, the Inaba's face drawn in concern. "Are you okay?"

"I… I am fine." Eirin said, taking Reisen's arm and moving it away. She glanced down at her desk, suddenly finding the paperwork in front of her quite useless. "I think I will be closing the clinic early today."

Her apprentice blinked in surprise, this was… odd. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Eirin said, standing and moving to the door. And then she hesitated, wondering if it would be a good idea to ask a means of forewarning… "And inform Tewi that if any of her rabbits see anybody with…" Again, a moment's pause, "Eight-pointed arrows on them, please inform me immediately."

Not leaving a chance for her apprentice to ask for elaboration, Eirin left. Reisen stood there for a moment, blinking in confusion. What was that all about?

**E**

**Pactus**

**E  
**

Aside from the students, there were not very many people around the school the moment the section that Keine actually lived in detonated. Her pupils were hanging out at the playground, which included a few remarkable items from the outside like something called a 'see-saw', waiting for their teacher to call them in for classes. The explosion took them by surprise and they turned just in time to see their teacher fly out of the debris, her gaze directed downwards. When the thing that had been Asata Matsumoto followed, the children screamed and ran.

Asata's face had gone sheet white, his pupils mere black pins in the center of a white mass and the manic grin he now wore on his face was terrifyingly hollow. But the most terrifying thing for Keine wasn't how Asata looked, but how he _felt_. Because of a curse, Keine could 'sense' and, if she desired, read the history of an object or person. That made her an excellent historian and was the reason she seemed the spryest during her history classes. But the thing in front of her felt empty, she could not sense or read it in the slightest.

_**"Scholar"**_The things horrible voice shocked the teacher out of her stupor, _**"What do you know?"**_

Keine clenched her teeth, this thing was something even less natural then the creatures that sheltered in Gensokyo, she could tell. She could feel it in her bone that this thing was not supposed to belong here, not in the slightest. Thus, she decided there was no reason to humor this creature. "That you are an abomination." She raised her spell book towards the creature, "That I have to banish you."

_**"Then you know nothing." **_The creature said.

Pain shot through Keine's body as she felt an invisible force seize hold of her, the very feel of whatever it was caused her body to prickle and the temperature in the air around her seemed to drop. Vaguely, she was aware of wetness on her upper lip, but she couldn't even open her mouth. There was a loud CRACK and the next thing the Town Guardian knew she was in a crater formed in the middle of the playground. Had Keine been an ordinary human, she probably would be dead right now. As it was she felt as though every bone in her body had been shattered.

The creature hovered at the edge of the crater, looming over the schoolteacher. It seemed to study her the way a bird studied an insect. Keine glanced around and found her spell book laying well-within reach.

_**"There shall be an apocalypse, a bloodletting to drown the stars."**_ The creatures eyes flared and the cold pain flared through Keine again, rendering her unable to move.

A danmaku bullet flew in from outside the village guardian's field of view and shattered against the creature's skin. The thing turned away towards the attacker and the invisible hold on Keine ceased. Without hesitation, Keine ignored the screaming torment in her back and rolled out of the crater, snatching her book as she scrambled back to her feet. She took the opportunity to quickly put some space from the creature and turned just in time to see one of the village magicians, she didn't get to see which one, be lifted into the air screaming before plunging back to the ground with such force that a giant splash of blood and gore coated the playground and the see-saw next to it. Subconsciously, Keine noticed that there had been far more blood released far more explosively than should be possible.

Of course consciously she sent a barrage of bullets at the creature… only for them to break upon its skin just as the magician's did. The abomination turned back to her and glided across the ground, completely ignoring the bullets. Keine decided to up the power level and, with a thought and a bit of will, a trio of lights flared into existence around her and fired a mass of lasers.

The creature seemed to bend without sliding, as much sense as that made, and thus dodged some of the lasers… but only some. The rest made contact, blasting and boiling away the skin, carving holes in the creature's body and taking a corner of its head off, but the creature did not stop. Silently cursing that she wasn't in her were-hakutaku form, Keine tried to back pedal only for the creature to lunge forward, grab her by the neck, and haul her off the ground, its very touch made the guardian feel as if she was on fire.

_**"The border no-one should cross will be bridged."**_The things grip was so tight on her neck Keine thought she was going to choke. _**"Antiquity and hereafter shall become one, the balance will be broken, the old door of death will be closed and a new one opened."**_

Now it really _was_ choking Keine, who was still trying to free herself from its grip.

_**"They will obtain the encompassing labyrinth, where natural and unnatural are distorted. And others shall follow them, a means to an end, slipping through the cracks of a dark eternity."**_

It drew the teacher right up to its face, eyes boring right through her soul.

_**"To an endless fate, reality will break."**_

As her vision began to blur Keine suddenly had a brilliant idea. It was clever, it played to a strength she had, the creature had put her into the perfect position for it, and the thing would never expect it. Keine rocked her head back and then smashed it forward, delivering a perfect head butt straight into the monsters face.

The creature released her and staggered back, the unexpected move doubly shocking from the unexpected strength put behind it. It wasn't much, but it was enough for Keine as she didn't even pause to gasp for air and plastered a trio of lasers at point-blank range right into the things center. The twisted ex-form of Asata blew backwards all the way across the playground and through the school room where she taught class. The creature was obscured by the plume of dust thrown up by the collapsing wall.

"Keine!" Gasping for breath, the guardian turned at the familiar voice to see Reimu land next to her, the maidens yin-yang orbs were out and circling her body. "Are you okay? What's going on? What was that thing?"

"I'm fine." No sooner did the words leave her mouth then did Keine wince, her back reminding its owner of the pounding it took. She suddenly felt exhausted, which didn't make sense… normal danmaku battles were only slightly less physical and often lasted much longer, although there had probably been a lot of adrenaline running. "Except my back."

"Are you sure? What about the nosebleed?"

Keine blinked in confusion, bringing her hand to her upper lip, the finger tips indeed came away red. So that was what that wetness was… "It's okay."

"If you say…" Reimu glanced around the wrecked playground, "Where's Asata?"

"That was Asata! How much did you see?"

"Arrived just in time to see you cave… that was Asata?"

Keine sighed in exasperation, "Yes, that was Asata. And what does 'cave' mean?"

Reimu was saved from answering by the discussed abomination, which burst from the ruins of Keine's school room, giant hole in its chest and all, with a scream that the pair heard in their minds as much as in their ears.

_**"SHALL YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH TO OPPOSE THEM ALL?" **_It cackled madly, rushing at the pair. Reimu reacted first, slamming out a torrent of homing shots and ordering her Yin-Yang orbs to blast away. The creature took the attacks all head-on, twisting as flesh, bone, and limb were eviscerated. It was only then that Keine noticed the creature had not yet bled from any of its injuries thus far. Finally the creature collapsed in a twisted pile on the ground, twitching once before halting movement completely.

"Is it-" Reimu began.

_Something _ascended from the body, a bright, ethereal form that hurt to look at. The phantom released an eldritch howl that caused both Reimu and Keine to feel like they had just joined one of Cirno's frozen frogs before it ignited in mid-air and fell back to the corpse. The strange fire splashed on contact, grew for an abrupt instant, and then immediately seemed to exhaust itself. When the flames finished dying a moment later there was no trace of the body that had been Asata Matsumoto.

"What…" Reimu stopped and then seemed to try again, "What the _fuck _was that?"

**E**

**Pactus**

**E  
**

The next several hours were rather busy. After pausing to catch their breath, Keine asked Reimu to gather the various powerful, in more ways than one, and important Youkai and humans for a meeting at the Hakurei Shrine later in the day. Reimu had been a little hesitant, but agreed and quickly set-out. In the end she managed to get most of Gensokyo's leaders, or at least their representatives, to show with three exceptions. The Satori who ruled the underground were unable to leave, Yukari (or one of her subordinates) was nowhere to be found, and Eientei… well Kaguya had told her that Eirin seemed to be acting rather paranoid and might have a fit if anybody from the hidden palace left, which the Shrine Maiden found odd but wasn't interested in pressing the matter. In the end, she was grateful that it turned out that way when she found Mokou had come along with Keine.

Keine, for her part, had done some cleaning up with her house, the village council, and, most importantly in her eyes, met with the orphaned family of the magician who had distracted the creature. That last one had been a particularly depressing affair and she had resolved that the family would be cared after. Mokou had been waiting for her back at the school building, concerned for her safety and agreed to come along. By the time she had arrived at the Shrine, the majority of the others had already arrived.

They were all gathered in where the usual get-togethers were held, in the corner immediately from the right of the entrance. Keine finished reciting her experience and what she believed it meant: something bad was going to happen.

"So… what would that be?" Yuyuko Saigyouji, Ghost Princess of the Netherworld, asked. She had been eating the treats Reimu produced while Keine talked and was studying an empty stick for any remnants.

Keine sighed, "I wish I knew… maybe if we look at what it said…"

"How is that going to help? That stuff sounds more cryptic than Yukari on a bad day…" Marisa replied. She technically wasn't a leader of anything, but had decided to come the moment she heard if for no other reason than to see plenty of old faces.

Patchouli Knowledge, the librarian of and representative from the Scarlet Mansion dully frowned at the witch. "It isn't that bad. For instance, consider: 'The border no-one should cross will be bridged', what do you think that could possibly be?"

"Not the Hakurei Border." Reimu replied, beating Marisa to the punch, "Things and people cross it all the time, no thanks to Yukari, although it technically hasn't been bridged…"

"But should they?" Youmu Konpaku spoke up from behind her mistress. The half-ghost had apparently been unnerved by the story, oddly enough she was the most easily spooked when her swords were sheathed.

"Not really." Reimu took a sip from her cup. She always had tea available for occasions like this, "Although as far as I can tell it really doesn't do any harm to the border itself."

"But the creature still indicates that whatever it is it's a border." Sanae Kochiya, Priestess of the Moriya Shrine, sighed, "I guess it involves Yukari somehow."

Patchouli nodded, "Assuming it isn't a metaphor of some kind."

"What about the bit about a labyrinth or something?" Suika called down from her usual spot, which was a-top an overhanging branch.

"Well, apparently it is what 'they' are after, but that brings up the question of who 'they' are."

"So it doesn't really tell us anything?" Aya finally put in. The reporter had seemed fine when Reimu found her, but was being uncharacteristically quiet. Reimu had tried to ask the Tengu how she was doing, but was brushed off with a clipped 'fine'.

"Frustrating, isn't it?" Marisa fell onto her back with a sigh, "I feel like I do when looking for a specific item in my house that looks like another dozen of the same item."

"Maybe if you give me back my books such activities would be easier."

Reimu quickly spoke up, trying to head-off the inevitable back-and-forth Patchouli's comment would bring about, "In any case, this certainly isn't an ordinary incident."

"Oh," Youmu gave a lazy grin at the Priestess. "And why is that?"

"Well, for starters, I don't have any hunches." That was enough by itself to cause everyone, except Aya, to stare at Reimu like she had spontaneously grown a second head, "Also, this certainly doesn't involve any Youkai."

"I can agree with that." Keine cut in, "That… thing, it's very presence felt wrong. I couldn't read its history and I don't think it was using any magic… it definitely wasn't using danmaku or the spell card rules."

"You said it took control of Asata's body?" Mokou asked, finally speaking up for the first time since Keine had told her story. "And Asata was the survivor of this village?"

"Yes. And he said before being possessed that they were gathered in this room and a great, well I guess he was going to say great armored figure, came in and started… chanting, I guess." Reimu glanced over at Aya and noticed that the reporter had suddenly taken a very keen interest in her previously written notes. Keine, oblivious to this, continued, "Reimu mentioned some kind of symbol in a room yesterday, maybe there was some kind of ritual?"

"I… I don't know." Reimu said, she was rather uneasy about repeating that story. Fortunately, Sanae saved her.

"Hmm… you mentioned Asata said something about a dark future?"

"'Darkness of a future' is what he said, yes."

"And something about reality breaking?" Sanae confirmed, "I don't know about you, but that sounds like a threat to Gensokyo."

"But one was uttered while he was being possessed and the other wasn't said by him but by that creature." Marisa pointed out.

"Are we sure about that? Maybe he was being revealed something while being possessed or that was the creature asking questions or…" And that was when Sanae was interrupted.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E  
**

It had been a rather pleasant clearing once, located rather close to the Hakurei Shrine. A handful of Youkai had lived quietly amidst the tall grass and few bushes alongside their wild brethren and the simple forest animals. Now they were all dead, the bushes reduced to mere wooden skeletons that nonetheless seemed to drip unidentifiable filth, a twisted miasma which whispered madness to the receptive lingered in the air, and the grass had been flattened into rotten symbols that would drive a human or Youkai capable of contemplating them mad. It was good for the few hundred captives that they were bound, blindfolded, and gagged… else they might have been rather distressed.

Well, actually they were distressed anyways and they just couldn't voice it, but could they see where they were they would have been even more disturbed. One of the twisted figures watching the captives from the edge of the field, weapon clutched in their hands, might have been wondering how these prisoners would react if they knew the liberal coating of blood that had been doused everywhere was the blood of hundreds of Youkai fairy's. Somehow, it was fitting that one of the requirements to carry out the plan was blood that wasn't supposed to exist.

Although, a pedant would note that the fairy blood wasn't actually fairy blood, but the fairy's essence and soul rendered into the form of blood. The same pedant would also have likely found him or herself quite dead before he or she had been able to conduct an appropriate inspection to reach that conclusion. Those who were called lost and damned tended to weed out the nitpickers very quickly.

At around the time Keine was telling her story to the assembly at the Hakurei Shrine, one of the figures, horrific symbols on his flak armor subtly different from the rest, turned at an invisible pull just in time to see the approach of an armored form, power and confidence emanating from its stride. He called out to the rest, speaking in a tongue utterly alien to this land. _"Snap to! Attention for our lord!"_

The dark soldiers turned simultaneously, took one look at the approaching figure, and as-one fell to their knees, heads inclined forward in respect.

_"Rise" _The figure said in the same tongue, towering over the twisted beings even after they rose to their feet, keeping the heads bowed. The symbols of Chaos undivided etched all over the figure's armor glowed a baleful incomprehensible color which even these fallen men dared not inspect too closely. _"Everything is ready, Scimar?"_

The leader who had spoken before clasped his hands before him. _"Everything, my Lord."_

_ "Good."_ The Lord began to move again, heading into the field. As he moved through it, the miasma immediately around him seemed to intensify and flow more ecstatically, like a wave breaking on the edge of the beach. The sorcerer was careful not to touch the bushes or captives and not to walk where the grass had been flattened, it would not do to disturb the perquisites. The soldiers watched the form move in the center of the sigils.

_"Soldier." _The Scimar jumped in spite of himself, he had not heard the approach of the somewhat smaller armored figures, compared to the Lord, which now stood behind him. _"Your services here are no longer required. Rejoin your unit."_

The Scimar quickly clasped his hands in front of him again before barking out orders, the dark soldiers moved away obediently, heading back to their encampment. The squad of the newcomers took their positions, facing outward around the clearing, bolters held across their chests.

In the center of the field, the sorcerer had retrieved a simple looking book. The tome was an ancient piece and would clearly have been rather hefty for an ordinary man, but it merely filled the gauntleted hand of the chaos lord. It was one of the Sorcerer's treasures, another very much like it had led him to this land and still rested with him, but this one would do more than just show him the way here. The corrupted being looked towards the sun, mentally did some calculations, and then turned to face east, raising the book as if in offering in the precise direction the Hakurei shrine rested.

And he began to speak.

At one time there was a language called Enuncia, although calling it just a language would be a vast oversimplification. Enuncia was also a form of knowledge and a terrible power, capable of rending the very fabric of reality through its utterance. When it had first been created, it brought its speakers into madness and ruin and was ultimately destroyed. Then a group of men had tried to resurrect it and use it to become gods, only to be stopped during their final ritual by other ordinary men… well, and the birth of a powerful daemon.

The language the Sorcerer spoke was not Enuncia, but it was very close and, in a twisted way, had a common lineage. Only the immobile 'men' who stood watch over their leader saw exactly what transpired as he spoke, and they were already too deep in the same kind of madness that swelled within that clearing to care about what they witnessed.

There was no sound and no light as the nature of Gensokyo's seal changed, but there was plenty of miasma, flesh, and horror.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E  
**

Sanae was interrupted by two things: the first was an unnatural chill which burst from the Hakurei Shrine that made everyone shiver while the second, and far more alarming, was that the sky went red. It wasn't a pleasant kind of red either it was a menacing color that instantly caused the group to think of blood.

"There shall be an apocalypse, a bloodletting to drown the stars." Keine didn't realize she had repeated the monsters sentence out loud until she noticed Mokou look at her sharply. In the mean time Youmo had drawn closer to Yuyuko, clearly worried but ready to defend her Princess. Suika had fallen from her perch in surprise, the chill had apparently sent Patchouli into a coughing fit, Marisa and Sanae simply stared skyward in surprise, and Reimu was running towards the shrine yelling about it and something about ice fairies. Then there was Aya…

The reporter had bizarrely fallen into a fetal position, covering her head and continuously reciting something. Mokou was the first one to notice the Tengu's odd behavior and was about to remark upon it when there was a second blast of icy wind. This one was much colder and struck with enough force that Youmu and Keine, who had still been standing, fell over and Reimu, who was most of the way to her shrine, was actually lifted off the ground and tossed a half-meter back. With that arctic blast, the blood sky twisted and then the color seemed to disperse as quickly as it had appeared.

There was a moments silence…

"What… what just happened?" Sanae was the first one to speak.

"The Shrine!" Reimu shouted, pulling herself back to her feet and resuming her sprint, "The border! Something happened to the Hakurei Border!"

"Wha-!" Marisa said, leaping to her feet and following after the Shrine Maiden. Reimu was the second most involved with the border after Yukari because, alongside Youkai, she was responsible for maintaining it. The Hakurei Shrine, as the common name implied, was the focal point, for lack of a better term, of the Border. That meant the Shrine existed both inside and outside Gensokyo, although on the outside it just looked like an abandoned shrine that hadn't been demolished because it was too isolated.

Because it was the focal point, theoretically, one could cross from Gensokyo into the outside, and vice-versa, via the Hakurei Shrine. Occasionally another part of Gensokyo would temporarily overlap with the outside, which is how outsiders often fell in. Some perished at the hands of the wildlife, some came to the Shrine to go back to the outside, and some decided to stay and took up residence in the human village.

But it was the border, not the outside that was on Reimu's mind as she dashed into the shrine and looked around. As its focal point, the state of the Shrine's interior reflected the state of the border and at first glance, everything seemed fine. But then Reimu noted that the wall structures had changed, what was once solid vertical lines seemed to have caught a nasty case of cobweb syndrome. Strands that looked as if they had been rotted into the wood spiraled out from circles and connected with each other.

"Everything seems-woah, what's up with the walls?" Marisa had caught up to Reimu and noticed the same thing the Shrine Maiden did.

"It indicates what has happened to the border." Reimu moved closer to one of the patterns, "I'm not sure what this means though…"

The rest of the group arrived and caught on with varying degree of rapidity, depending on how much time they had spent within the Shrine.

"Whoever is doing this is in very big trouble." Reimu had an air of certainty in her voice as she inspected the damage, "Yukari should be here soon and when she gets here..." She turned away, leaving the sentence hanging.

Marisa shook her head, glanced over at the rest of the group, and frowned as she noticed something. "Where's Aya?"

Everyone glanced around and noticed that the Tengu was no longer there. It seemed she had slipped off after the event.

"She hasn't been acting like herself since the village…" Reimu said, "I don't know how to feel about that."

Mokou thought about how she had seen Aya react during the change in the sky and compared it to her other encounters with the Crow Tengu. Yes she was certainly acting strange.

"Youmu…" Yuyuko suddenly spoke up. An odd look had crossed the phantoms face as if she had listened to someone come up to her at random and say an completely nonsensical sentence. "I feel-"

And then, much to everybody's (but particularly Youmu's) horror, the Hakugyokurou Princess collapsed.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E  
**

The aftermath of the ritual was desolation. The grass, the sacrifices, the plants, the blood… the entire clearing had been rendered into nothing more than a patch of dirt. Only the Sorcerer remained, he had stored the book away and was now crossing back to the tree line and the armored figures that stood there. "Lycus."

The fallen Astartes in question stepped forward at his leaders call. _"My Lord?"_

_"Inform the mortal soldiers, we are breaking camp and moving north. Our crossing is there."_

_"Yes my Lord._" Lycus paused, and then said, _"There has been tension between the Red Rivers and the-"_

_"Keep an eye on them and deal with any troublemakers. I will not be denied."_

The Chaos Marine nodded, _"At once my Lord."_

As they departed, the Sorcerer took one last moment to look east towards the distant hill that the Hakurei Shrine rested on. It was too far away to see the Shrine itself, but the Chaos Lord knew it was there with certainty. So the priestess had not disposed of his... donation. That could have been a problem for him, but there was no other way to get the pieces in place without blowing the bands cover.

Of his own accord the great figure turned north, where he knew he would be able to meet up with the rest of his army… and where his quarry rested. It would get even tougher, he knew, but with the most troublesome of his foes neutralized, with his army, and with the other pawns that would soon be discovering the way he had opened to this land, he would succeed. He would obtain his prize, he would break this reality, and he will become… even more.

The sorcerer turned and continued on his way where his current forces were camped. Yes, he would obtain the power he sought, but first he had to go to his army and then on to the bamboo forest… and on to the mansion hidden within it.

_Fin (for now)._

******'GOT-FIC':** In order of appearance

**Inaba:** Aka: 'Rabbits'. A kind of Youkai, as the name implies they have rabbit ears on their head. Like fairy's they are mostly simple minded and mischievous, although they do not avoid humans as much as fairy's and form rather modestly sized settlements. Of special notice is the Moon Inaba, of which there are very few in Gensokyo. While they have the same overall appearance, Moon Inaba have a different attitude from the 'Earth Inaba', being simultaneously smarter and disinclined to mischief. The majority of the Inaba (and all of the Moon Inaba in particular) within Gensokyo are found at Eientei, located deep within the bamboo forest.

**Danmaku:** The Romanization of the Japanese word for 'barrage', when someone from Gensokyo talks about danmaku they are referring to the destructive application of magic. Most of the time this is done with 'bullets', fast-moving magical projectiles that can be both lethal and non-lethal, which make-up the most basic, and most common, form of danmaku. There are also spells, which are usually applied through spell cards, books, or another apparatus the user chooses to project with, although some users eschew the use of an apparatus altogether. If the user does not have enough magical potential to use certain spells, it is possible to create a magic source that also functions as a danmaku apparatus. Spells are immensely varied in both their effects, the form of the attack, and power. Fire storms, ice sickles, miniature suns, magical lasers, and many more are all possible spell attacks.

**Spell Card Rules:** A kind-of unofficial set of rules followed by humans and youkai that dictate what are known as 'danmaku duals'. Features include a limited number of spells permitted which are declared pre-dual, the banning of physical fighting, prohibition on killing, and not declaring a dual without reason, although that last one is flimsy as virtually any reason can be used as a justification such as 'I'm bored'. A danmaku dual should be differentiated from a 'danmaku _battle_', which are much more serious, and dangerous, affairs that are often life-or-death situations.

**Georgraphy of Gensokyo:** With the Human Village in the physical center of Gensokyo, the other important locations are listed as such. Starting immediately to the west of the village is the bamboo forest and, within it, the mansion of Eientei. Beyond the forest is a coastline that continues on past the forest in both directions. In the opposite direction and a ways away from the village, stretching across the east and north east, is a mountain range with the largest peak being the Youkai Mountain. On top of the mountain is the Moriya Shrine and beneath the range is the Underground. From the mountains a river runs towards the human village but turns northeast in the foothills and pools in a lake just beyond the foot hills. The island in the center of the lake is where the Scarlet Devil Mansion rests. The river then resumes across the north of Gensokyo until it runs into the sea. The Hakurei Shrine is located to the South of the village, in the foot hills of yet another mountain range. East of the Shrine and out of the foot hills is the Forest of Magic and just beyond that the gateway to the netherworld, which is technically its own land. The area's south and northwest of the village are of no real notice except for the small human settlements and the paths that lead to them. What lies beyond further beyond these places and out across the ocean (or is it a sea?) is unknown and nobody has really tried to find out.

**F/N: **Don't have much to add. I should note that chapter 1 has been edited a bit and both it and this chapter may receive further edits in the near-future. Also FFN hates my unique formatting, so AGH! Now as a tidbit, here's the next chapter title…

**Next Chapter Is: **Foreshocks


	3. Chapter 3: Foreshocks

"Talking in Japanese."

"_Not talking in Japanese._"

'Thinking in any language.'

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Touhou, I don't own 40K.

Also, there is a high probability to alteration to Touhou canon for both purposes of (a lack of) authorial knowledge and story, if you don't like that you can go. Or get drunk if you wish to emulate Zun.

**Intrusion of the Dark Stars**

**Chapter 3: Foreshocks**

"LADY YUYUKO!"

The instant following Yuyuko's collapse was near pandemonium. Youmu, with a cry of distress, immediately tried to dash forward and catch her mistress, but tripped over Sanae causing both to crash into Mokou and end up in a pile on the floor. Keine, who was the closest to Yuyuko, also tried to grab her but the phantom had gone incorporeal and simply fell through the school teacher's arms. Reimu, exasperated from having one crisis after another thrown at her, leapt to a hasty conclusion that precluded malevolent forces and yelled at either Suika and Marisa, nobody was sure exactly which, about spiking food. Suika, also exasperated that everything was so abnormal today, shouted back while Marisa was too busy trying to untangle Sanae, Youmu, and Mokou to notice.

Patchouli, in the mean time, calmly skirted the chaos and reached Keine, who was kneeling over the prone body of Yuyuko. The ghost princess had not passed through the floor, but apparently remained intangible at attempts to touch her if Keine's failing efforts at propping her up were any indication. Patchouli drew Keine's attention and shook her head, turning back to the rest just in time for Youmu to struggle back to her feet and, not even bothering to apologize to Sanae and Mokou, crossed the final distance to the one she was sworn to serve.

"Lady Yuyuko!" Youmu shouted again, this time with slightly less distress. The swordswoman fell to her knees beside the princess and, thanks to the younger girl's half-ghost nature, was able to grab her hand, "Answer me! What happened?"

"I don't think she can answer you." Patchouli said quietly, studying the ghost's unmoving form. "It seems she has fallen into something of a comatose state."

"That's impossible!" Youmu shouted, her worry driving her towards hysteria. "Yuyuko's a ghost! You can't-I mean it isn't-it shouldn't be…"

"I thought so too." Patchouli furrowed her eyebrows in study. "But the timing can leave no other conclusion."

Further into the shrine's interior Marisa and Mokou finally got back on to their feet. The latter was prevented from shouting something angry by a stern look from Keine. For their part, Reimu and Suika had stopped yelling to listen to Patchouli. The Hakurei Priestess studied Yuyuko hard for a moment, "You mean, what's happened earlier that changed the border?"

"Precisely. That event earlier must have been a physical side effect of whatever has altered the Hakurei Border and disabled Yuyuko. It is possible that it has had further changes then what we have observed here and…" Patchouli looked at the shrine's new wall style, "Not all of those changes have occurred yet."

"Wait…" Marisa spoke-up, "What do you mean?"

"Yuyuko collapsed several minutes after the sky event while the shrine, and the border, presumably changed during or immediately after it. Either another event that was not noticeable occurred afterwards or there was a delay for this particular mechanism to kick in." The librarian gave them all an ominous look, "So there may be more effects to come."

Reimu sighed "Is that what we are referring to all this instead of incidents? Events and effects? Isn't that all kind of… euphemistic?"

"Whatever is happening certainly falls outside the bounds of regular incidents." Patchouli paused and then nodded to herself, as if she had just managed to convince herself of what she said.

"But…" Everybody's attention was brought back to Youmu. The poor girl still held to the unconscious princess's hand, tears glistening at the edge of her eyes. Her voice was low and pleading, "Please, tell me we can do something… anything to help Lady Yuyuko."

For the first time so far, Patchouli's tone changed slightly, taking on more empathy. The stoic wasn't good at showing her emotions, but everybody there knew her well enough to notice the change. "I'm afraid we have fallen outside the realm of both my experience and my study. I would guess that our best move would be to take Yuyuko to the Eientei clinic, Eirin…"

Mokou bristled at the name of both the mansion and its head doctor but kept silent, letting Patchouli finish.

"... would be the most likely to diagnose this condition." The librarian glanced over at Reimu, "And I would think Yukari would like to know about her friend's condition."

"If you think I can, or will, hide this from her…" the Priestess rolled her eyes, "Well, then you are not living up to your last name."

"Alright." Youmu said, slinging Yuyuko's arm over her shoulder. The barely visible form of her ghost half moved around to take the other limb. Marisa suddenly started moving forward, an encouraging smile on her face.

"I'll come with you, run interference on any dumb fairy who tries to take a shot." She glanced at the unmoving form of Yuyuko and then back at the bodyguard, giving the latter a look of sincerity. "And don't worry! Yuyuko will be fine, you know that better than anyone else."

"I suppose I'll help you there too." Mokou said, rising to her feet, "I know some shortcuts through the bamboo forest." Not that the phoenix girl would ever be let in there unless Kaguya was bored and wanted another immortal death match. Although, another opportunity to kill the outcast princess would actually be nice…

Youmu gave an uncertain smile, still very concerned over the ghost in her arms but grateful at the assistance. "Thank you."

"Good luck," Sanae said from in front of the shrine a few moments later.

"I'll inform Yukari!" Reimu called out after the three took off.

There was a moments silence as the four left, the two shrine maidens, the librarian, the schoolteacher, and the party-Oni, watched the group go, then Reimu turned to Patchouli. "Alright, now do you know anything about the obvious perpetrators?"

"The beings that attacked the village." Keine unnecessarily supplied, only drawing a semi-annoyed 'I-don't-need-reminding' look from Patchouli.

"Yes, well they are the most likely ones to be behind all this. In fact, this might have something to do with why they took many villagers captive and… killed those fairies."

"What? How would that work?" Sanae asked.

Patchouli hesitated, clearly disturbed by the information she was about to share. "I… I assume you are familiar with the concept of blood rituals and human sacrifices?"

Keine and Reimu went pale, while Sanae took a bit longer to catch on, "Yes I know of such things but what… oh… oh gods."

Keine gulped, clearly horrified and nauseous at the prospect, but a piece of reasoning rebelled against it. "But… but magic doesn't work that way! The runic templates and transfer of mana-"

"Magic **in Gensokyo** doesn't work that way." Patchouli pointed towards the shrine gate to emphasize her point. "It seems logical that these beings are using a radically different system to achieve the desired events."

"What monsters would use such a system that has that kind of ritual as a requirement?" Reimu asked, also clearly disturbed.

"Who says that the ritual is a requirement for the system? It may just be specific for the ritual or needed to achieve truly powerful effects… after all, how many spells do you know can knock out someone like Yuyuko? How many spells that can alter Yukari and yours work on the border?"

Reimu bit her lower lip and looked away instead of responding.

"Speaking of which," Sanae said, trying desperately to veer away from the subject of ritualistic killing, "Where is Yukari? You said she would be along shortly, Reimu."

Reimu frowned, she was expecting the gap Youkai to appear any second now, but then she had been expecting that for a while now. There was no way Yukari could have missed this… event. It was so huge and crossed into her territory so much that there was no way she could have missed it even if she was in the dead middle of her winter slumber. "I am really going to have to go looking for her after this meeting and give her an earful."

"You have never been able to find her house bef-" Sanae was silenced by a glare from her fellow priestess, Reimu had never liked losing much and disliked being reminded even more so.

"Yes, well…Whoever the perpetrators are, they can't be left alone." Patchouli glanced at Keine, "The creature's words, while vague, clearly indicates some kind of plan by these beings to achieve… well, even if it isn't the destruction of Gensokyo, I cannot imagine that we would like the outcome."

"But…" Reimu hesitated, she was a stubborn girl and so hesitant to admit her own faults, but reality was reality and even she gave ground when everything pointed in one direction. "But we found the offenders of every previous incident through my intuition, which isn't telling me anything." The priestess paused, and then added slightly sardonic, "Except that something really bad is happening of course."

"I know." Patchouli said, "We will have to organize a large-scale search, both human and Youkai."

"That will take time," Keine pointed out, "And we don't know how much time we have."

"Which means we must act quickly."

Reimu nodded, the plan was the best they had. "Alright then. Keine, you'll have to make arrangements with the villagers. Patchouli, inform Remilia on everything and on this plan. Sanae, you report to both Kanako and the Mountain Council. Suika, could you go with Sanae and head to the underground to inform the Satori's? We'll need as many people on board as we can get. I'll try to find Yukari, because we _need _to know what has happened to the border and how to fix it. Come to me tomorrow as soon as you all can. Any questions?" There was a long silence before Reimu realized that not only were there no questions, all three individuals in front of her were giving her an odd look. "What?"

"Erm…" Keine said, "It's just… you have never been so… so…"

"Leaderish?" Suika suggested. Keine shrugged in response. Reimu blinked, not understanding exactly what the two were saying.

"We had best get going then." Patchouli said before the Hakurei Shrine Maiden could ask for clarification.

"Yes," Sanae began to float off the ground, "I will also visit Aya and find out what that is all about."

"That should wait." Keine also took off, "We need to get things moving as quickly as possible."

"But-"

"She's right." Reimu interrupted her Moriya counterpart, "Yes, Aya is a friend… although she doesn't always feel like it, but the entirety of Gensokyo may be at stake. We have to prepare."

Sanae reluctantly conceded the point. After saying farewell for the day, the schoolteacher, the librarian, and the Moriya priestess left for their respective homes. Reimu didn't leave immediately; instead she walked to the shrine gate and looked over Gensokyo.

Yes, this could all be at stake and yes, she would save it. Whoever was perpetrating this evil had to be stopped or all of Gensokyo could suffer.

As she took off, the Hakurei Shrine Maiden had no idea that she had massively underestimated what was at risk.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

"Are you **stupid**?" Mokou bellowed at the Inaba guarding the entrance to Eientei. The little runt had told them flat out that no-one was being allowed into or out of Eientei and had remained defiant despite Youmu's pleading. Mokou jabbed a finger at the unconscious Yuyuko being held bridal style by her bodyguard. "Do you know who that is? That's the Hakugyokurou Princess! There is something wrong with her and Eirin might know what!"

"The Master has ordered no non-resident be let in." The Inaba was infuriatingly haughty and Mokou was seriously contemplating torching the little rabbit right there and then, "And even if things were normal, I wouldn't let you in."

"This isn't about **me**!" Mokou yelled, "This is about those two! Let me see Eirin!"

"If you think I will call the master out because **you** want me too…" The Inaba abruptly realized there was something glowing on the edge of its peripheral vision; she turned and found herself staring into a very powerful magical object, held by Marisa. "W-what are you doing?"

The witch gave a cheeky grin as she aimed the mini-hakkero reactor at the Inaba… and the wall into Eientei behind it. "Simple, either you can let us in or I can create a way in **and **give you a spark like you will never forget. So what will it be?"

The Inaba paled, on the one hand she knew she was facing imminent laserization and on the other it knew, given the way she had heard the order communicated, that Eirin would be pissed if she violated orders. Fortunately she was saved as the entrance door slid open and Tewi, the head of the Inabas, stormed out.

"You!" She shouted at the door guard, "What is going on here?"

"Erm… Tei, these three want to get inside and see the master because of the phantom there and because the phoenix-girl was with them and because of the master's orders-"

In the time the rabbit had begun to spill out her explanation, Tewi had looked at the line-up and evaluated the situation. "Let them in."

The Inaba stood there for a moment before answering, "Eh? But… the master-"

"I will deal with Eirin…" Tewi paused for a moment, "Or maybe I'll get Reisen to do it. Anyways, let the witch and the ghosts in." She looked at Mokou, "If any of the Inaba saw you inside right now-"

"I get it…" Mokou said, her temper dying down. The immortal didn't have anything against Tewi or, indeed, any of the rabbits. It was Kaguya and, to a lesser extent, Eirin that she had the vendetta against. "I'll wait here."

Marisa and Youmu, the latter still supporting the unconscious Yuyuko, were ushered in.

"You're acting unusual today, Tei." Marisa said once they were inside. She had built up a good rapport with Tewi, those who knew the two figured it was a sly trickster thing.

"Everybody here is acting bizarre today, so it isn't that out of the ordinary." Tewi sounded frustrated, which both Youmu and Marisa knew was indeed unusual, as she led them towards the clinic. "Reisen is wandering around in a confused daze, Eirin has sealed herself in her room, and the princess is trying to break in and get Eirin to tell her why."

"Wait… Kaguya is trying to get Eirin to leave her room?" Marisa's view of reality had just gained another chink.

"I know, it's like the world is upside-down or something." The group entered the clinic and Tewi indicated to Youmu to put Yuyuko on the patient bed. "What happened to her, anyways?"

Youmu bit her lower lip as she carefully lowered her charge, "She collapsed after… well… did you see what happened to the sky?"

"Where it turned red? Yeah, Eirin seemed to go little nuts during that thing. She activated some of the short-term defense charms for some reason before sealing herself in her room. It was kind of scary actually."

Marisa and Youmu looked at each other. Things were just getting stranger and stranger.

"Well, you should just wait here. I'll see if I can pry Eirin out with the news that I violated her orders." Tewi's statement caused Youmu to blanch, the latter having a more serious view towards a subordinate's duty to his or her superior.

"So Eirin went a little nuts?" Marisa mused as soon as Tewi was out of ear shot.

"Do you think she knows something?"

"_Indubitably_." Marisa grinned, trotting out that line in the new language, a habit she had been acquiring much to Reimu's annoyance. Ignoring Youmu's slightly confused look, Marisa continued, "Maybe she is even behind everything."

"What?" Youmu's head whipped around so fast that Marisa thought for a moment it was going to come off, "That… doesn't add up."

"I know," Marisa slouched back, "And it is unlikely, but she knows something about whatever is happening. We'll just have to wait to find out what."

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

"Yo, Patchy!"

Patchouli nodded in response to the greeting from the Scarlet Devil Mansion's gate guard. Hong Meiling had apparently been doing a little physical training at her post when the Mansion's head librarian returned, given the sweat on her brow. "Hello, China."

"It's Meiling." The red head replied automatically. In actuality, she was used to the nickname, only Sakuya and Flandre ever called her by her real name and even only half-the-time then. "Remilia wants you to report to her as soon as possible, about the meeting and the red sky and stuff."

"I thought she would."

"Yeah," Meiling tilted her head in curiosity, "Something is up, right?"

Patchouli knew what the woman was really asking and also knew that she didn't have the time to go over everything that happened at the meeting. "Yes. You'll find out everything."

"Alright. See ya Patch."

The librarian merely waved in response as she pushed through the gate and moved on to the main doors. Inside the mansion, everything seemed fine. Fairy maids flittered here and there, performing their duties assigned by Sakuya and only pausing to nod respectfully if they noticed Patchy. Patchouli didn't immediately head to the observatory or the covered patio, the most likely places Remilia Scarlet would be, instead she walked to the library.

The mansion was a large place, even more so when one considered it was bigger on the inside, and it would be easy for the majority of visitors to get lost in. Patchouli, however, had lived in the place for centuries and knew the mansion layout as well as any of the other occupants. Finding the library from the entrance could have been done while blindfolded.

Patchouli entered the library to find her assistant, a devil Youkai known as Koakuma, muttering angrily as she rustled through several small stacks of books. Patchouli caught the words 'stupid witch' and 'ruining organization' and internally laughed. Yes, the Librarian found it slightly irksome that Marisa kept stealing her books, but it had become sort of a game between the two and occasionally she did have the good sense to actually return one. Koa, on the other hand, had merely found the witches 'raids' tiresome and irritating, but didn't complain about it to Patchouli because of the latter's fondness for the game.

The magician gave a cough and Koakuma nearly seemed to leap out of her skin, before spinning around and bowing. "My Lady, I am sorry, I did not hear you come in."

"You don't need to apologize for doing your work." The librarian meant it; she loved this library and maintained it dearly. Koakuma made running the place even better, with her more overt enthusiasm towards the books appealing to Patchouli. "But I need you to take care of a vitally important task."

Koa relaxed and gave an eager grin, "Of course!"

"I need as many of the books on the study of human sacrifice and blood rituals as you can find."

The devil blinked, the gears turning quickly in her head as she reasoned everything out. "Is this about the current incident?"

"Well… essentially yes. I don't have time to explain, but this takes top priority."

"I understand! I'll get to it immediately."

"Good. I need to go to talk with Lady Remilia." Patchouli waited for Koakuma's confirmation before heading off. No sooner had the librarian stepped out and shut the doors then she heard a polite cough behind her. Patchouli turned to the silver haired human maid who had appeared as if from thin air behind her.

"My Lady has heard you have returned." Sakuya Izayoi, head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, "You are going to see her?"

"Yes. There is some essential material I need to study after the discussion, and probably dinner, so I directed my assistant to gather as much of it as she could." Patchouli replied evenly, "Is Remilia at the covered patio?"

"The observatory, actually."

The observatory was actually more like a study, with a few shelves containing Remilia's favorite books in one corner, a simple table with various trinkets in equally varied states of disassembly in another corner, and Remilia Scarlet herself seated at the modest table in the middle. There was a telescope at the window, one of the few in the mansion of significant size, but since it was still daylight, the heavy curtains had been drawn for Remilia's benefit. The Scarlet Devil looked up from a Rubik's Cube obtained from the outside she had been playing with and gave her usual grin. "Patchouli, I heard you were back."

"My apologies for delaying my visit but I wanted some things to be ready after the discussion." The librarian took her seat without waiting for Remilia's indication to do so as she spoke. "Was that unacceptable?"

Sakuya had produced a steaming kettle of tea and cups with their attendant saucers as if from nowhere, although both Patchouli and Remilia knew she had actually frozen time to quickly retrieve them from another room. The maid poured the two their own cups as this preliminary conversation took place.

"No." Remilia shook her head. "It is quite alright. I get the feeling that the next few days are going to be busy for us all. That thing where the sky went red, do you know anything about it?"

"It would be best if I fit that in talking about the meeting at the Shrine."

At this moment Sakuya, the tea finished, broke-in. "With your permission my lady, I would like to attend to some duties."

Remilia waved, an indication of approval, but tossed in a audible statement with the gesture. "I will call you if I need you."

"Of course, my lady." With that Sakuya, and the additional tea sets, seemed to vanish into thin air.

"So, Patchouli." Remilia focused her attention on the chief librarian. "What is going on?"

**E**

**PACTUS**

**E**

On weekend nights, the Garden of the Sun was a rather popular place for Youkai to gather. Parties were held, drink flowed freely, and the supernatural creatures danced the night away to music played by the Prism River Sisters. Those nights were the one time the resident of the Garden, Yuuka Kazami, was hospitable, the one night she let intruders freely move about the sunflower fields that gave the Garden its name… or so most Youkai thought.

It wasn't a weekend night right now and the only Youkai that could be seen about was a few bored fairies and a one Wriggle Nightbug. Wriggle was unlike most in Gensokyo in that she was not afraid of Yuuka. That was not because Wriggle was powerful enough to stand-up to the ancient being, because she wasn't, but because she had learned that it wasn't trespassing that ticked Yuuka off… it was the touching of her flowers.

Sure there were other things that could get Yuuka in a maiming and/or killing mood, insulting her was a good one for instance, but it was kind of obvious that since Yuuka was a Youkai who primarily controlled plants she would naturally care a lot about flowers. At least, Wriggle thought it was obvious, her fellow Youkai just thought she was crazy. Because of this understanding, a kind-of bond developed, with Wriggle running errands for Yuuka by picking up gardening supplies.

"Miss Yuuka?" Wriggle called. She didn't shout the name, Yuuka didn't like that. It was curious: Yuuka was always tending to the garden at this time, but Wriggle couldn't find her. "Are you here?"

No answer, like the last three times. A gentle breeze gave a momentary reprieve from the afternoon heat, causing the sunflowers to wave gently around the insect Youkai. With a sigh, Wriggle made her way to the center of the garden… to the actual cottage Yuuka lived in. There she paused, even during the weekend festivals Yuuka came down on those who entered her house without express permission and Wriggle was no exception. She had still been inside a few times, at Yuuka's invitation of course, and thought it looked comfy.

Maybe she should knock? Wriggle didn't know if that would upset Yuuka; she mostly worked all this out through trial and error. Well, didn't hurt to try... with a deep breath, Wriggle landed at the doorway and rapped her knuckles gently on the wood.

Nothing. Wriggle knocked louder, still nothing, she sighed and began to turn away when something caught her eye. The edges of a liquid, largely dry, had crept out from under the door. Kneeling down, Wriggle brushed her finger over the liquid and licked the digit. As a Youkai, and an Insect Youkai in particular, she had a far more refined sense of taste then humans. She immediately identified the chemical: it was tea… sugared tea, the kind Yuuka liked. But why was it dribbling under the-

Wriggle flung the door open. It was a new-style one that swung on its hinges rather than slide and she made sure not to swing it too hard, Yuuka would get angry at that. The sight inside brought her up short. Lying a few feet from the door, in a dry pool of tea, was the shattered remnants of a set of cups and pots, partially covered by an upside-down tray and just beyond the tray was the collapsed form of…

"YUUKA!" Wriggle scream was loud enough to startle the fairies hanging around the edge of the field.

**E**

**PACTUS**

**E**

"What is taking them." Marisa mumbled impatiently. The witch had read the latest magazines and taken the nice picture on the clinic wall which hadn't been there the last time she visited, the two actions pretty much exhausting the means Marisa kept herself entertained. Now the magician was dangerously bored and getting irritated: where was Eirin and why wasn't she here to help Yuyuko?

"I hope she gets here soon." Youmu had pulled her seat over to the bed Yuyuko now lay on and hadn't moved an iota since. The concern the swordswoman felt was even more apparent in her voice then on her face.

The clinic door opened and both occupants turned in expectation only to see Reisen, apparently looking rather haggard, enter the room with a small briefcase.

"My master apologizes," The moon Inaba said, "But she cannot come to treat Lady Yuyuko right now. I have been told to do so in her stead."

"But… what if you…"

Reisen blocked Youmu's protest quickly, maintaining the formality she always seemed to show to everyone. "I am fully capable of diagnosing any problem. If I find it is beyond my ability to treat, then I will contact my master."

"Right…" Marisa said as Reisen pulled the end of what looked like one of those blood pressure-thingy's out of the case. "What is up with Eirin anyways? Tei told us she has been acting rather weird today."

Reisen frowned as she pulled out some kind of electronic gizmo, attached to the 'blood pressure-thingy' by the cord.

"I don't know. She was arguing with the princess when she ordered me to come here. All I know is that this morning, during the lecture and paperwork session, she abruptly stopped talking, zoned out, and then ordered me to close down the clinic."

"And…?"

"And she hasn't said much since." Reisen tentatively wrapped the pressure pads around the unconscious Yuyuko's wrist before pushing a button on whatever gizmo that was. Marisa guessed it was some kind of magic-enhanced technology for it to work on ghosts… or something.

"And you don't find any of this bizarre?" Marisa scratched the side of her head.

"My master has her reasons for acting this way, I am sure." Such a typical answer from Reisen, always studious and respectful of her superiors.

"Apparently it has something to do with the past." The new voice made everyone jump. Kaguya Houraisan, Lunar Princess, moved through the room with the same amount of grace she liked to show almost everywhere.

"What of the past?" Youmu asked.

Kaguya sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in a non-apparent warding of stress. "Eirin… has always been a mystery, even too me. She has existed as long as I can remember and as long as any person on the moon had remembered. Awhile ago, she confided in me that her own memory is… incomplete."

"What, she got amnesia at some point?" Marisa made a punching motion into her hand, "She got hit on the head?"

Kaguya gave a lazy grin, "I doubt you could make Eirin forget anything with a simple smack on the head. No, according her, it's more like a large chunk has been… sealed away. Even that Satori, the one able to sneak around using people's subconscious, has not been able to see it. According to her, everything over, oh… five thousand years ago gets blurry and then peters out altogether."

Youmu cupped her chin in thought, "So what does that have to do with her reaction with everything just now?"

"She's afraid." Marisa's voice held the tone of sudden understanding. "Something from within that memory seal recognizes what is going on and Eirin is reacting through that. Even if she doesn't consciously know what is going on… she has an inkling at the edge of her mind and it's something that scares her witless."

"Exactly what she said to me…" Kaguya paused, "Or near enough."

A buzz drew everyone's attention back to the machine strapped to Yuyuko's wrist. Reisen looked down at the instrumentation and frowned. "Odd…"

"What? Do you know what is wrong?" Marisa asked.

"No… in fact, the equipment is telling me everything is fine."

"**FINE?**" The normally reserved Youmu seemed to explode after a moments silence, "**How can she be fine? She just suddenly collapsed! The only way for Lady Yuyuko to collapse is if something is wrong with her!**"

Reisen shrank away from the swordswoman's rage. For a moment Marisa thought Youmu was going to bring out her sword and decapitate the Moon Inaba's head, so she reached for her mini-hakkero reactor. Kaguya apparently was thinking along the same lines and stepped forward but Youmu instead seemed to deflate and burst into incoherent tears.

"Youmu… are you okay?" Marisa asked, leaping to her feet.

"No… I'm not okay." Youmu replied after managing to calm down a little "H-how can I be okay when something is wrong with Lady Yuyuko and we can't find out what? How am I supposed to serve her best when… she… she is like this?"

Quietly, Reisen leaned over and undid the wrapping around Yuyuko's wrist. "Youmu… listen, Yuyuko is okay. As far as we can tell it's like she is asleep."

Youmu stopped crying as she listened to the rabbit with tear streaked eyes, listening quietly.

"All I can suggest is for you to take her home and wait. Lady Yuyuko will wake-up, she has too. Because of her… spiritual situation, there is no other possibility."

Silence.

"Youmu?"

More silence.

"Youmu? Are you-" Marisa began.

"I'm… better. I… guess I'll do what you said." The half-ghost silently got to her feet and, with assistance from her ghost half, hauled the unconscious Yuyuko back over her shoulder. "Thank you for your assistance."

"I will see you out personally." Kaguya said, "It is only proper."

"Sure thing…" Marisa said, before Youmu could reply, "And I'll get you to the Hakugyokurou Gate."

"Alright… alright." Youmu gave an uneasy smile, "Thank you."

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

The door rabbit, her name had never been mentioned, glared suspiciously at Mokou, who just ignored it. The immortal sighed as she sat on a rock across from the creature, dully poking at the ground with a bamboo stick she had found… somehow.

"So…" Mokou glanced up at the Inaba, "You have a name?"

The rabbit's glare broke into a passing look of confusion before she replied. "Rika."

"Hmm." Mokou casually leaned back to stare at the sky. It was late-afternoon and the sun was noticeably getting towards the horizon, but the sky had not yet started changing into the evening hues. "So… how are things around Eientei?"

"What's it to you?" The Inaba snapped.

"Oh, I can't be curious?" Mokou snapped, sitting back up properly. Really, the paranoia of some of these rabbits…

"You try and kill the princess at nearly every opportunity, why am I supposed to tell you anything?"

"Forget it…" Mokou checked the position of the sun again. Was that Youkai who ran the Fried Eel Cart around? Maybe she could have dinner there.

Her attention was drawn to the door as it slid open and Marisa, Youmu, and Yuyuko emerged. Mokou climbed to her feet and opened her mouth to ask…

"They don't know what's wrong." Youmu replied somberly.

"Oh…" Mokou glanced down, suddenly feeling very awkward. "I'm… sorry."

"It's fine."

"I'll help you out of the forest." Mokou added, more resolutely. She glanced over at Marisa, the witch seemed to look oddly distant. "Everything okay?"

"Eh?" Marisa looked surprise for a moment, then gave her usual grin. "Yeah… I'm just thinking."

She didn't add what she was thinking about. About the revelations involving Eirin, the possibility that she was connected to the threat facing them. Marisa did not mention any of that as the four took off into the air.

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

"Yes. I'll get China on it first thing tomorrow." Remilia said. The Vampire was in what Koakuma called 'full maturity mode' now, the debriefing of what had happened at the Hakurei Shrine forced her to take these events very seriously.

As one would expect of her, Remilia had a lot of pull with the various Youkai groups that lived near the Scarlet Devil Mansion… those fairy maids didn't just come from nowhere after all. They weren't vassals, properly speaking, but that was a fair approximation of their relationship with the elder of the Scarlet Sisters. So Remilia could call upon them for aid in times of trouble.

"The Hakugyokurou Princess, will she be fine?" Remilia asked.

Patchouli considered the question and shrugged. "The state she was in made it impossible to tell, only Youmu could touch her and she does not have the perquisite knowledge on even Youkai biology, much less…" The Librarian paused as she considered the absurdity of the following pair of words, "Ghost biology. If anyone does, it would be Eirin."

Remilia's façade broke as she burst into that 'noble' laugh she put on for kicks, "Ghost biology… what a oxymoron." She stopped laughing and tilted her head, "It's almost dinner."

Patchouli blinked and looked at the observatory's wall clock to see Remilia was right, of course. Vampire's have an instinctual knowledge of the general time, a necessity from before clocks since they couldn't exactly try and figure it out via the sun and the moon went through its various phases where it was not always visible.

"I suppose this is a good place to adjourn." Remilia glanced over at Patchouli, "Will you be taking dinner in your study?"

"Yes, Koakuma most certainly will have the material I would need and-"

"MILDAY!" Patchouli gave a start and Remilia nearly fell out of her chair as Sakuya came out of nowhere, her voice featured barely constrained panic and a clear sign of distress was in her eyes.

Remilia recomposed herself and gave her chief maid a hard look. "What is it?"

"It's your sister."

Remilia groaned, petulantly planting her head in her face in her hands. "What has Flandre done this time?"

Sakuya shook her head, "That's not it." The maid spoke quickly, her words kept coherent through the discipline Sakuya had installed in herself. "The Little Mistress hasn't done anything but something has happened to her."

Patchouli suddenly had a sinking feeling in her stomach, which of course she didn't show, but before she could respond, Remilia sat up and gave a Sakuya a hard look. "Are you serious?" A moment's pause, Remilia's look melted into surprise. "You're serious."

Another moment's pause as that sank in for the vampire.

"WHAT?" And just like that, Remilia shot out of her chair, _flew _across the room, and nearly tore the observatory doors off their hinges getting them open, all in the space of four seconds. Sakuya followed after her while Patchouli fumbled a little getting up, by which time they both had vanished down the hall.

Silently cursing her condition, the Librarian flew as quickly as she could without running into anything through the halls, down a series of stair cases, and finally through the big door that marked the entrance into the basement. The room that belonged to the younger of the Scarlet Devil Sister's had its somewhat smaller door wide-open, an eventuality that usually would have raised a different kind of alarm, but not this time.

Sakuya and Remilia were already there at Flandre's bed, as was Meiling who stood a little further away. For once, the younger Scarlet's room walls were normal, but one glance at the small figure laid out on the bed told Patchouli why that was.

"-igned me to inform the Little Mistress and when I first arrived I thought she had just decided to take a nap on the floor." Patchouli apparently arrived just in time to hear the beginning of Meiling's explanation. The Gate Guard's usually friendly and boisterious tone was gone, replaced by one quiet and disciplined. Patchouli knew that was Meiling's means of showing distress, reverting to a more zen-like calm that hid her worry.

The Librarian turned her attention to the others as Meiling continued, first looking at Sakuya who was biting her lower lip… probably unintentionally, some kind of reflex. Remilia simply sat in a hastily produced chair (who produced it, or from where, Patchouli could only guess), her face blank, but accepting the information in a kind of shocked silence. Unusual for her, but then again...

Finally looked at the figure laid out on the bed. Flandre Scarlet's eyes were closed, her face drawn into a bizarrely neutral expression. Just like…

"Patchouli."

The magician started at Remilia's voice. One word and one glance at the elder Vampire was all the Librarian needed to know the question being asked, the fear behind it, and the desperate hope that the apparent was not wrong.

But it was.

"The same…" Patchouli said, "Exactly the same as Lady Yuyuko."

**E**

**Pactus**

**E**

The sun was in its final hour of decline when Momiji Inubarishi, Captain of the Tengu Self-Defense Force, landed at the door of Aya Shameimaru. The Wolf Tengu knew that, as an officer in the TSDF, she should be at the meeting called by the Elder Tengu. She knew that the Moriya Priestess was there, as was one of the two goddesses from the shrine and that signaled an issue of extreme importance.

But Momiji wasn't at the meeting for one simple fact: Aya wasn't there either when she was just as obligated as the TSDF Captain. In fact, during the past two days, Momiji had seen Aya precisely four times: twice going out and twice coming into the Youkai Mountain. Neither time had the crow Tengu tried to cajole Momiji into doing some inane thing or another for the sake of her dubious reporting job. In fact, the last time, right after the bizarre event in the sky, Aya hadn't even stopped to talk to the Wolf Tengu, not even for a brief hello.

Momiji didn't know why that irked her and truthfully, if she had been able to look past her own pride, she didn't know why she was showing up at Aya's door. It was an accusation fervently denied by Momiji (and simply ignored by Aya) that the two were close friends… and as far as the Wolf Tengu was concerned, that was absolutely false! She was just suspicious that Aya was acting so strange. It _was_ suspicious!

Yes, that's the story Momiji had convinced herself of.

"AYA!" The Wolf Tengu shouted as she slid the door to Aya's house open… and too an empty welcoming room.

Well, huh.

Momiji knew Aya was here. She had asked some of Crow Tengu's neighbors on the way here and they had replied that they had seen the reporter enter her house and not leave it. And this was where Aya usually was at this time of day, eating dinner. Either here or…

Momiji went into the study, "Aya! The Elder-"

She came up short. Aya's study was immaculate and the crow Tengu was nowhere to be seen. The files were arranged, the pictures she had taken were in a folders stack, and the desk where she assembled the printing copy of the Bunbunmaru newspaper was clean except for the shredded remains of a photo…

The shredded remains of a photo… Aya never shredded photos. She _always _kept them, hence why she needed folders for them. Momiji quickly made her way to the desk and in one glance knew it would be futile to try and piece the picture back together. The shredding was too well done, the image in too many tiny pieces.

So, she not in the entrance and not in the study, which left only two more rooms and Momiji doubted that Aya was in the restroom. The wolf was approaching the door to the bedroom when her sensitive ears began to pick up Aya's voice beyond it. The reporter was whispering and Momiji paused to listen.

"… _you want?_" Unusually, Aya was speaking in the new language and it sounded as if she was pleading with someone. But no other voice replied, "_Why do you keep talking to me? What does it mean? What do the numbers mean?_"

A moment's pause, then Aya's voice came back, this time growing more and more agitated with every word.

"_Listen to me… why won't you listen to me? Don't you know who I am? Be quiet! Answer me! At least leave me along! Shut-up! Shut-up! __**SHUT-UP!**_"

The last line was almost a roar and the feeling of a strange burst of magic from within made Momiji instinctively leap away from the door just in time for a small table to burst through it, fly across the room, and embed itself in the opposite wall.

"Err… Aya?" Momiji, shaken by the sudden outburst tentatively, peaked into the room. The reporter was sitting in the center of the room, looking incredibly haggard. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair frazzled, she was sweating profusely, and looked incredibly tired. At Momiji's voice, the Crow Tengu had glanced up in surprise.

"Momiji?" She said, her voice tired and with a slight rasp. "What… why are you here?"

"An important meeting was called by the Elders. You were supposed to be there." Momiji was surprised to find that she didn't feel angry with Aya. Instead she felt… worried? What? "Are… are you okay? What happened?"

Aya paused and tipped her head to the side, as if she was trying to hear something. Then she gave an exhausted smile, "I am now. Their gone… oh thank the gods, they are gone."

"Who?"

"The voices."

For a moment Momiji wondered if Aya had gone crazy. Granted, crazy for Tengu, and Youkai in general, was very different then crazy for humans, but hearing voices that were not there definitely counted. Even the younger of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, who was the closest to a Youkai's definition of insane, didn't have that. Or at least Momiji didn't think she have it.

Before the Tengu Captain could come up with a reply, Aya continued. "The voices… they were in my head. Started yesterday, at the village after I saw…"

The Crow Tengu suddenly stopped and then strenuously shook her head before she continued.

"I'm not going to talk about it. No. I think… the photo I took, the camera… it interacted somehow. I don't know. All I know is that was when the voices started."

She was rambling, Momiji realized. Well, at least that was in character, although it wasn't the stream of questions combined with leaping to the conclusions to those same questions that most of Aya's ramblings were. Still, the Wolf Tengu came over and took a seat, intent on listening.

"They were barely noticeable at first, just hovering there at the edge of my conscious. But after the sky, they became louder, more insistent, and…" Hesitation, "Scarier. They always spoke in the new language, always the same voices, always saying the same thing. Apart and alike all at once, it was numbers."

Aya looked at Momiji with no particular expression, just a plain and flat tired glance.

"What did they say?" Momiji finally asked after realizing that Aya wasn't going to continue by herself.

"Numbers."

"Numbers?"

Aya nodded, "A numbers sequence… always the same sequence, always the same numbers. I… I can still remember them. They… mean something, I don't know what. I… I wrote the down there."

She pointed at a spot on the floor and Momiji for the first time noted the carvings. And if the wolf Tengu didn't miss her guess, Aya had carved that into the wood with her nails.

"So… just now… they stopped?"

"Yeah." Aya gave another tired grin. "They were… annoying. And… scary." That admission didn't fit with Aya's personality so much that Momiji just stared. "I began to try and talk to them and, well, I became agitated."

"So… how did you stop them?"

"I… I don't know." Aya fell onto her back, putting an arm over her eyes in exhaustion. "I remember shouting and then… some kind of spell."

"So, are you really okay?"

"Yes. Just… so tired."

"Well." Was all Momiji could say, and then she spent a few moments in quiet thought. Maybe she should add this tidbit to the meeting? She was running late, near inexcusably so, but at least Aya was alright and the connection was obvious. Still, might as well pull some more information out while she could. "Aya, what were the numbers?"

No response.

"Aya?" The Wolf Tengu turned and saw that Aya had fallen asleep on the floor. "Oh."

The Captain glanced around as if there was someone else there to help her before remembering she was alone. Well… Aya had looked pretty worn out. Momiji glanced around, this time carefully, before she carefully picked up the Crow Tengu bridal-style.

As Momiji turned towards Aya's bed, the reporter stirred in her sleep and rubbed her head against the Wolf Tengu's arm. "Mo..mi…"

Momiji almost tripped in surprise. Had Aya tried to say her name in her sleep? No… there was no way Aya could already be dreaming anyways. As she arrived at the bed, the Wolf Tengu noted the notebook, not the one Aya usually used, and lonesome looking pencil left on it. She carefully laid Aya down and grabbed up the two items, before backing away.

Momiji returned to the scratch on the floor and looked at what Aya had scrawled. Sure enough, it was a number sequence written in the New Style. Momiji quickly copied it to the notebook.

4 9 8 6 7-1 41 5-595 2 4 7-514 8 9-6

The wolf Tengu double checked it for confirmation and then tore the written sheet off and folded it to go in her knapsack. She didn't try and analyze it, there were others for that kind of thing and Aya apparently had been unable to puzzle it out. Placing the pen and notebook next to the bed, Momiji gave on last long look at the sleeping Aya before departing the premise.

She was not there several hours later when Aya quite clearly uttered a single sentence in her sleep. "And who is Slaanesh?"

Nobody would ever find out about the smell of incense that temporarily accompanied those words.

**E**

**PACTUS**

**E**

Reimu was angry. Nothing, nadda, zip, no sign of Yukari, no sign of how to find Yukari. Prior to the current incident (she refused to accept Patchouli's terminology), Yukari's home had always been the sole exception to her famed intuition. She couldn't find it, simple as that. It was aggravating, and doubly so because Reimu knew that in this case Yukari should have found her rather than her going to look for Yukari.

Reimu was sorely tempted to when to simply open up with the Danmaku she found Yukari. When her frustration reached its boiling point, she settled for wailing on a group of fairies instead. That had helped some.

The sun was just moving below the horizon when Reimu returned to the Shrine. Landing before the gate in a bad mood, she gave a last "God damn Yukari!" before cresting over the staircase and back to her home.

She got three steps through the gate before the blur of a familiar small Youkai barreled into her.

"CHEEEEEN?" Reimu's exclamation was laced with all of the surprise she felt as she toppled onto her butt. Particularly since the childlike shikigami was usually so shy even to those she knew. But Chen was apparently overcome with something else…

"REIMU! YouhavetohelpLadyYukari! AndRansaidyoucouldfigureout-"

"Chen!" The young nekomata stopped speaking and fell away from Reimu at the call of her master. Ran Yakumo, shikigami of Yukari Yakumo rapidly crossed the shrine grounds. Even in the dark light, Reimu thought something looked off about her.

"Ran! Reimu will help Lady Yukari! Won't she?" Chen's voice was filled with hope and worry that a human child might if traumatized. Ran simply placed a motherly hand atop her shikigami's head which was apparently enough to momentarily calm the younger Youkai.

A second later, Reimu's brain caught up with the events. "Ran? Chen? I've been… somethings happened with Yukari? I was looking for her…"

"She's inside." Ran said, and Reimu immediately noted the exhaustion in her voice. "But… she can't help us."

"What… you… what?" Reimu came up short. Yukari can't help them? Balls! Yukari was _the _Youkai in Gensokyo! How could she not help with something that so concerned them?

"I should just show you." The nine-tailed Kitsune turned, holding Chen's hand as she moved back to the Shrine, Reimu stared dumbly for a few seconds before following.

Yukari lay on her back in the shrine's front room, so silent and still that only the rise and fall of her chest seemed showed that she was still alive. The blank expression of her face reminded Reimu of Yuyuko's face after she…

No…

"It took me awhile to notice it." Reimu's attention was drawn back to Ran and she cringed. Now that the elder shikigami was in the light, Ran looked like she had aged thirty years… or more accurately, aged into a fifty-year-looking old woman. There was even some _grey_ in her hair! Ignoring Reimu's stare, Ran continued. "Yukari snores. That's what first tipped me off, the lack of snoring. It must have been a few minutes after it stopped before I realized and when I did…"

She looked Reimu straight in the eye and made a hand motion to indicate her body, "Not all of this is because of whatever spell that has been cast on Yukari. I even resorted to danmaku to wake her up. Needless to say, she didn't… and a few minutes later the house began to rot."

"The house?" Reimu asked. Instead of answering, Ran glanced at Chen, who was quietly sitting nearby, apparently trying to distract herself with her tail.

"Go outside for a little bit, Chen."

"Alright." The childish cat girl muttered and Reimu was again struck by the worry in her voice. The younger shikigami slid out the door and Ran turned back to the Shrine Maiden.

"Yukari… well, I suppose built is the right word, our house inside the Hakurei border. Only me, Chen, those invited, and Yukari can travel between it and Gensokyo via her borders."

"No wonder I could never find it." Reimu turned looked down at Yukari. Unlike Ran, she didn't look aged at all but that face… it was wrong, too neutral just… too neutral.

"The house began to rot," Ran repeated. "Just fall apart." She glanced around at the walls, "these grooves appeared, exactly like the ones on the wall, first. Then they rapidly began to widen and the… wrongness began to seep in."

She looked back at Reimu, "I didn't know what was going on, but something… my nekomata side was screaming at me to get out. So I did… I grabbed Yukari and Chen and fled."

"It happened to Yuyuko too." Reimu suddenly said, "She was here after… well, during a meeting. The sky went red, these grooves appeared… and then she collapsed."

The two just sat there in silence, processing the information. Then Chen cracked the front door open and called. "Ran?"

"Yes, Chen?"

"Where is the moon?"

A second's pause.

"What do you mean, Chen?"

"The moon! There's supposed to be a bendy one but it isn't there." The nekomata slid open the door further as she pursued the question. Reimu knew there was supposed to be a crescent moon tonight and with a sigh at the interruption, she climbed to her feet and walked back into the Shrine's courtyard.

The sky was cloudless, the stars shone brightly, and moonlight consistent with a crescent moon fell and shaped the shadows. Reimu looked into the sky and…

No moon. There was moonlight but there was no moon.

"What…" Reimu barely realized that she was speaking, "What is going on?"

_Fin, for now._

******'GOT-FIC': **In order of appearance******  
**

_Vampire: _Vampires in Gensokyo are very rare and all immigrants from either the outside or other sealed lands. Unlike the story's, they do not haveto drink human blood, garlic is only poisonous if ingested, sunlight is more a _big time _irritation, and they can deal with wooden stakes and cross running water just fine, thank you very much. Also, Christian crosses are no problem.

_Gods (Kami): _Gods in Gensokyo are more of the Shinto nature. They are actually more akin to personified aspects of the world that are very in tune with such. Unlike the view in Shinto, however, the gods in Gensokyo require the faith of other sapient creatures in their power and abilities to maintain themselves and their powers. It should be noted that gods are one of the few non-human sapient creatures inside Gensokyo which are not necessarily Youkai. Although there are Youkai who are also gods... it's complicated.

_Shikigami:_ While roughly the Japanese equivalent to the concept of a wizard's familiar in European and American culture, a shikigami in Gensokyo is a servant bound to its master through a contract that extends well into magic. The bound creature, essentially, becomes a kind of _de-facto_ child of his, her, or its master.

_Nekomata:_ A special kind of cat in Japanese mythology that possessed magical properties and a tail that divides as it ages. In Gensokyo, these are (essentially) catgirl Youkai who follow the same path and possess large amounts of magical potential.

_Kitsune: _Take a Nekomata, replace the cat aspect with a fox aspect, and you've got it.

_Modern Human-Youkai Relationships: _Over the past several decades, the attitudes between the human and Youkai populations have certainly taken a positive turn. Most Youkai only rarely will attack lone travelling humans and are much more likely to try and play tricks on them or offer to sell them amenities. In turn, humans have gotten used to seeing a single or small group of Youkai come into their villages for the same purposes as humans: shopping, eating, and socializing. That most Youkai have rather short memories for minor offenses and humans have too short lives compared to Youkai certainly speeds the process along. A certain shop keeper has also speculated that the (apparent) improvement in tolerance in the outside world may also be responsible to some degree for this human-Youkai reapproachment.

**A/N: **I hope I didn't make a mistake in figuring out Shinto concept of gods, otherwise I am going to be very embarrassed for possibly screwing up a probably sensitive culture issue. I don't really know how many Japanese actually read this but… yeah.

Not much in this chapter. It's mostly tying up the previous one, tossing out some plot threads, adding a little foreshadowing, a bunch of character interaction (which may or may not be immensely OOC), and a touch of non-overt shipping. Next chapter actually ties this one up and moves into (one of) the first significant encounter.

On that note, I'm not entirely satisfied with how it turned out. Some parts came together nicely (Patchouli's return for instance) while elsewhere I found myself thinking: 'am I creating plotholes further down the line? Oh god, I hope not.' But fuck it all, it's not like I'm getting paid for this or anything.

You might have noticed that I have changed the scene breaks… that also applies to the previous chapters. If you see the faux-Latin word 'Pactus' in bold between two also bolded capitol-e's… well, that's the scene break. There might be some kind of pretentious meaning behind it. Oh yeah, and author's notes are now going to be exclusively after the glossary, duh.

I suppose I should explain about the canon in this fic. As should be patently obvious, I am breaking with canon in a number of areas, but with good reason. First, I only learned some things as I was already moving along (like that Yukari lives in a village called Mayohiga, which I predictably found out _after_ I had written half the chapter). Secondly, the fact that 99% of Touhou's canon apparently isn't actually canon but _fanon_!

Even in my short time with the 'franchise' (I don't think that's the right word, but whatever), I have lost count of the Doujinshi artists and fanfic authors who seem to have forgotten, for instance, that Remilia can control fate. And UsuallyDead created a great, if flawed, fanfic while making **much** more severe changes to canon. If he can get away with such things as taking Reimu and Marisa's ability to fly away, then surely I can get away with much less egregious tweaks?

And that's that very small rant. I suppose next time I'll be explaining my characterization of the canon characters. Speaking of which, you may have noticed that the warp sorcery that has conked out Yukari, Yuuka, Yuyuko, and Flandre didn't affect the goddesses. Is that important? I'm not telling! I'm also not saying what the two last effects the warp spell has caused that I haven't revealed in this chapter.

And ending on a more somber note, please provide as much support as you can for Japan following the catastrophic earthquake and the other catastrophes it left in its wake. In fiction, such disasters make for fascinating, exciting, and even heart wrenching story's but in real life, where actual people are hurt and killed, it is merely a time to mourn the dead and help the living.

EDIT: Someone pointed out to me that the numbers thing is like the recent Call of Duty game (Black Op's). I would like to clarify that I honestly was **not **thinking about that when I came up with the idea, although in retrospect there was probably some subconscious influencing thing going on there. The numbers in this fic still important though. Also, did some error correction.

**Next Chapter:** Mountain Guard


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